


The Boy And His Other Warframe

by TheMugbearer



Series: Calix Lator's Stories [2]
Category: Warframe
Genre: Fluff, Gen, Short, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-03
Updated: 2018-03-03
Packaged: 2019-03-26 09:07:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13854570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheMugbearer/pseuds/TheMugbearer
Summary: A Tenno named Calix wakes up from a nightmare, hears strange noises in his Orbiter, and moves in to investigate...





	The Boy And His Other Warframe

_Rap… tap… tap…  
Rap! Tap! TAP!_

I wake up in a cold sweat, my breath heavy, my eyes wide open. I sit up in my bed, listening to the gentle melody produced by my Somachord.  
I had a bad dream, it seems, though I don’t remember any of it. Lotus knows, I’ve had my share of nightmares since I was awakened from my Transference sleep on Lua.  
I cross my legs, meditating on the music and my own breath. But then I hear a noise.

_Rap… tap… tap…_

I tense: the noise is barely distinguishable, but still familiar. I’ve heard that noise before.

 _“Rap, tap, tap,” a hollow whisper came from all sides as my Volt’s fingers crackled with energy, ready to strike. Then, out of the darkness, his spectral form approached slowly, relentlessly._  
_It’s Rell! He’d gone insane from the burden that the Red Veil put on him._  
_I couldn’t fight him, even if I could cause him any damage at all._  
_And so I ran, guided by the Holy Speaker’s mournful wails, away from the maddened spectre of a boy I once knew._

I shudder. The chains of Harrow were broken several months ago. Rell now rests in peace, his burden spread evenly across all of the Tenno.  
The noise repeats itself again. It’s coming from the cross-section of the Orbiter compartment.  
I slowly get up and walk around the display table in the middle of my quarters. A slight gust of holographic wind passes me. I look over the diorama I chose to be projected: the ruined metal carcass of a Corpus ship, buried in the ice of Europa.

 _Rap, tap, tap,_ I hear the noise again. But then something else: a metal clink.

I slowly proceed further, past the pedestal with Lotus’ helmet sitting upon it. I stop, distracted again. A painful lump forms in my throat. The feeling of loss and being lost takes me over for a moment as I remember the moment when I saw the Lotus leave me… us, the Tenno, all alone.  
I am snapped out of my grief by another series of taps and clinks. Very close now.  
My heart is pounding. The sudden realization that the Lotus is not there to provide any kind of moral support anymore, it fills me with dread. But I steel myself and clench my fists. I am a Tenno. I shall know no fear.  
I sneak towards the door and pause to listen again.

_Tap, tap. Clink-clank. Tap, tap._

I hold my breath. I feel my hair standing on end as my Void powers congregate in my palms. I’m tense, ready to fight once the door opens. I slam my palm into the sensor panel.  
The circular door slowly splits apart into the walls. The dark cross-section is lit by the ambient lights of working machinery, but over in the farthest corner I see a green light retreating, towards the Arsenal.  
I dive forward, hiding behind the wall, waiting with my hands at the ready.  
I am so paranoid right now, I can almost hear two dreaded words:

_“Hey, kiddo.”_

_Kiddo. My father’s voice. My father’s words._  
_Something about that entity made me severely anxious. The Man In The Wall, Rell called it. A presence from Beyond. Indifferent. Inhumane._  
_When I returned from the sacred Red Veil grounds for the first time, it was waiting for me, perched on one of the terminals in the Liset. I was weary and tired from the fighting. I wasn’t prepared for what waited for me._  
_A complete copy of myself, with glowing orange eyes sat there, tilting its head curiously. When I turned and saw it, it said “Hey, kiddo” in the most mundane tone, as if we were good friends who didn’t see each other in a while._  
_In my surprise, I accidentally broke off the Transference. The idea of some external being breaching the security of my Orbiter terrified me. That meant I was no longer safe. I was vulnerable. And I hated being vulnerable._  
_However, when I got to the bridge, there was no Man In the Wall, or whatever you would call it… And since then, I’ve been keenly aware that there’s something lurking in the walls of my ship._  
_I kept expecting that ghostly kid to pounce on me from around the corner when I least expect them. But time went by and it never did. At least, not yet._

I hear the noise again, so very close. I now realise those sounds I’ve been hearing are not just taps: they are steps. Slow, measured steps, followed by the clinking of a chain.  
I reveal myself from behind the corner, my teeth gritted, ready to pounce on whoever it is… and I stop in my tracks.  
Approaching me, from the ramp leading to the arsenal, is my Harrow. Martellus, I’d dubbed him, after my last name. A white-and-red armored Warframe, accented with metallic gold, he’d always seemed to me like a regal priest.  
And now, holding his crystalline thurible, he steps towards me, waving it before him, the chain clinking rhythmically.

 _The first time I saw a Warframe act on their own was when the Shadow Stalker was about to snap my neck, back when I’d just been rescued from the Reservoir._  
_“What are you waiting for, Shadow?” beckoned the voice of Sentient Hunhow from inside the massive two-handed blade, rammed through my Volt’s chest. Cyrus sat on the floor, unmoving. No big surprise, since my consciousness had left him. Transference was severed. I was too busy struggling with the grip of Stalker’s hand on my throat._  
_But then, just when I was about to lose consciousness, I saw Cyrus’s arms twitch and then jolt, grabbing the sword stuck in him._  
_To Hunhow’s surprise -and my own- Cyrus was able to break the damned thing, severing the Sentient’s connection to the Stalker and forcing him to retreat._  
_Since then, Cyrus had begun to show signs of self-awareness on several occasions, such as helping me stand up from my Transference chair to walk me to the helm of the Orbiter._  
_But I’d never seen Cyrus actually move around the Orbiter of his own accord._

Martellus does not stop at the sight of me, stepping even closer.  
Baffled, I move aside, energy fading from my fingertips, paranoia subsiding.  
My Harrow continues his ritualistic walk, turning at the corner and keeping on his way, his thurible the source of that green glow I saw earlier.  
Given the role Harrow and Rell played, and my own impression of Matrellus, I quickly came to understand what he was actually doing. He was consecrating the Orbiter, as if warding something off.  
Is this why I never saw the Man In the Wall again? Did my own Harrow ward the entity off? Was it a part of Rell that remained in this Warframe that continued to serve as a guardian against the horrors of the Void, even with Rell himself gone?  
I have more questions than answers, but at least my anxiety is fading. I follow Matrellus some more, walking a few laps along with him.

The clinking of chains and the sound of steps has a relaxing effect, and eventually I calm down completely. It’s time for me to return to sleep.  
“Thank you, Matrellus,” I whisper to the Warframe and pat it on the arm as I’m about to leave. The Harrow stops in his tracks and turns his head. I swear, his neural sensors are trained on me, as if he just snapped out of some sort of trance and was trying to understand where he is and what he’s doing. I nod to him.  
Matrellus nods back slowly, then proceeds with his duty.  
I return to my quarters and skim through the shelves with various trinkets I’ve gathered. Here’s a Quittance statuette, gifted to me by the leader of the Perrin Sequence to signify our partnership. Then there is a crystal fish, a gift from Quill Onkko. And then: golden Donda, a spinning fidget tool that was used by Palladino to reach for Rell. And I can swear to Lotus that it spinned ever so slightly faster than usual.  
I get back to my bed and try to meditate on my breath again. Halfway through meditation I fall asleep.

No more nightmares visit me that night...


End file.
